The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake had a magnitude of 5.8 on the Richter Scale. The epicenter was half a mile deep and centered near Louisa, Va., about 40 miles from Richmond.

The quake, which hit at 1:51 p.m. and lasted only a few seconds, was felt up and down the Eastern Seaboard - from the Carolinas to Toronto.

The tips of three spires on the National Cathedral in Washington fell off, part of a building collapsed in Baltimore and a brick chimney crumbled atop a housing project in Red Hook.

That was the worst of it - except for the panic.

More than 12 million people may have felt the quake's sickening swaying, the USGS said.

"Wow, that was scary," said Nathan Buck, 41, a filmmaker who was editing a video on the 7th floor of a pre-war building in Harlem. "I saw my globe start to wobble. At first I thought - is it me? Then a pile of CDs came crashing down."

"I thought the building got bombed and it was 9/11 in the Bronx," he said. "I grabbed my son and held him as tight as I could. I have never been so freaked out in my life. I thought the building was coming down."

Office workers gather on the sidewalk in downtown Washington after the quake. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

Cellular service was disrupted as millions of people simultaneously reached for their phones to place a call or send a text message.

The city said calls to 911 spiked to 6,900 in the half hour between 1:30 p.m. and 2:00 p.m, most placed in the final 10 minutes. Normally, 911 receives 800 calls in a half hour.

No problems were reported with the MTA's bridges and tunnels or the subway, but flights at Newark and Kennedy Airports were briefly grounded as a precaution.

"There are no initial reports of major infrastructure damage, including at airports and nuclear facilities," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest after President Obamaconferred with his emergency management team

In Washington, D.C., most major buildings were evacuated. The quake shook the White House and was felt on Martha's Vineyard where President Obama was playing golf when it hit.

Two nuclear power plants near the epicenter in Virginia shut down automatically as part of a normal safety mechanism.

My Mission

Followers

To Change The World

Exclusive Area 51 Pictures: Secret Plane Crash Revealed

The CIA created Area 51 in 1955 to test and develop top secret U.S. military projects in the remote Nevada desert. More than 50 years later, the base still doesn't officially exist and appears on no public U.S. government maps.

Royal Families And New World Order

According to Braun, four cards which would be drawn and laid out in order. The goal is to install fear in people and have them conform to the wishes of the elite. They will impose their own ideologies and realities on the mass populous just as they did with the War on Terror. These cards or covert plans will help establish the NWO.

Fukushima Radiation: A Soft-Kill Operation

Arnold Gunderson, a 39-year veteran of the nuclear industry, stated: “I absolutely disagree with the scientists who say that Fukushima’s not going to hurt anyone. The numbers I’ve seen, from reputable scientists, are that Fukushima is going to kill 200,000 from increased cancers over the next 50 years.”

The People vs. Goldman Sachs

To fully grasp the case against Goldman, one first needs to understand that the financial crime wave described in the Levin report came on the heels of a decades-long lobbying campaign by Goldman and other titans of Wall Street, who pleaded over and over for the right to regulate themselves.

Vaccines engineered for the WHO, IMF, World Bank, UN and U.S. as a genocidal bio-weapon

On January 29, 2010 the richest man in the United States and chairman of Microsoft, Bill Gates declared, “We must make this the decade of vaccines” Bill and Melinda Gates announced on that day that their foundation will commit $10 billion over the next 10 years to help research, develop and deliver vaccines for the world’s poorest countries.

20 Signs That A Horrific Global Food Crisis Is Coming

In case you haven't noticed, the world is on the verge of a horrific global food crisis. At some point, this crisis will affect you and your family. It may not be today, and it may not be tomorrow, but it is going to happen.